Comic Books

Our final project in our Wampanoag unit was to create a comic book depicting a Wampanoag person and how he or she felt about the arrival of the Pilgrims.

  To make these comic strips, students had to first learn about the historical events, then make an opinion about whether the Pilgrims had more positive or more negative effects on the Wampanoags, choose strong emotion words (using a thesaurus), and write a paragraph.  Then they had to learn the comic book app and choose one strong sentence from their paragraph to use in the final piece.  They also had a chance to critique each other's comic books.

What we've learned about the Wampanoags

We are finishing up our unit on the Wampanoags and how they were affected by the arrival of the Pilgrims.  Throughout this unit we've been reading and writing and discussing.  We've also recorded some of our work onto our iPads using an app called StoryKit.  Below you'll find links to view Keegan's book and Sarah's book.  On the iPads these look like books.  Online you'll see all the pages at once.  You can click on the speaker icon to hear a sound recording. 
     Sarah's Book
     Keagan's Book

Please note that using this app was a learning experience.  Some pages might be incomplete.

Dictionary App

We've been working on paragraph writing for a few weeks now.  Students must write paragraphs throughout the week during book groups, writing time, and unit work.  Our newest iPad app is a dictionary.  Here's Jonah and Zoe editing their work and checking the spelling of a few words with this awesome resource.

Cooking Sobaheg and Comparing Pilgrims on the Wampanoags

We are deep in our study of the Wampanoag and the Pilgrims.  Last week we cut up squash from our school garden and cooked it into a stew with cornmeal called sobaheg.  This is a traditional Wampanoag stew made from wild game and cornmeal.  We left the meat out to satisfy the vegetarians in the class.

We also made cornmeal with blueberries.  Several students said we should tell the kitchen to cook this food for school lunch!

We watched a movie and read information from the Plimoth Plantation website to gather information on the lifestyle of the Pilgrims and the Wampanoags back in 1621.  Then we took those notes and used them to write a paragraph comparing and contrasting the two groups.

Place Value

Why is place value so important in math?  How does it help us to understand quantities?  How can we use our understanding of place value to add or subtract accurately?

Students record their understanding of place value onto their ipads.

David creates a sound recording which describes what happens to a number when the digits are rearranged.

In this math unit, we are working on identifying the digits in a number, rounding off numbers to the nearest hundreds or tens place, adding three-digit numbers, and finding the difference between two numbers.

Use your understanding of place value to solve these problems:

254 + 329 = n                 78 + x = 143                   522 - 218 = a

Sharing their page about place value.

What We Are Reading

All the students in the class are part of a book group led by an adult.  Here's what each group is doing:

Orly's Group: We read a Comanche legend and wrote a paragraph about the main character.  We then recorded this paragraph, paying attention to our phrasing as we read, on our ipads.  We didn't learn very much about the Comanche from this book, so now we are researching the Comanche to find out more about their lifestyle.  We are doing Google searches on our ipads to find out about their homes, their food, their clothing, and the resources they had available.

Mrs. Greenblott's Group:  We are reading a book about Mesa Verde.  We've learned lots of things but also have many questions.  For example, how cold was it in winter?  Was it enough to cover the windows with stone slabs to keep warm?  It's really cool to look at pictures of homes built into caves along cliff walls.  We are taking notes on stickies, discussing what we write, and then recording what we've learned, what we wonder about, and what we think on our ipads.

Laurie's Group:  We are studying the Havasupai tribe.  These Native Americans are from a canyon in Arizona.  In reading a book about the tribe, we noticed that the people lived in a very dry place in the country but that they grew food in gardens.  We wondered, where were these gardens?  We used Google Earth to discover that the gardens would have been located along the lush floors of the canyon while the tops of the plateaus are too dry for farmland.  We are also creating a book on our ipads to share what we have learned.

Deb's Group:  We are reading a legend from Native Americans on the Plains.  We are also researching what life was like for those Native Americans.

Sell those raffle tickets...

...and earn us an ice cream party! 

Actually, the real reason to sell those tickets is to help us pay for field trips.  If you haven't heard of this amazing raffle, come by the school to check it out and buy tickets.  You could win an ipad or a collection of gift certificates to local restaurants or a variety of other prizes.

Book Groups

We started new book groups this week.  If you were to stop by any day, you'd see students reading and discussing books about different Native American tribes or Native American myths and legends.  We are comparing these genres of books as we learn more about Native Americans.  During this time, you might also see small groups of students doing fluency practice, learning to read very long words, learning to type, or recording their thinking about their book on their iPad.

Compost Needed for our Garden

A few weeks ago, several teachers met to clean up the garden and build taller beds.

Ellen turns a bed while Emily and Eric prep boards.

Now we need more topsoil and compost.  Do you have any to donate?  We are hoping to fill up the beds before the first snowfall.

Future Academy star atop topsoil.

Lauren prepares to fill beds with topsoil.

I'm already looking forward to planting beans, corn, and squash in the spring.

Orly builds a higher wall for the garden bed.

I am thankful for...

I am thankful to have a class of such enthusiastic learners!  I love each part of our day.  I love how focused the class is in math, talking to each other about how they solve the math problems, explaining their thinking in their exit ticket books.  I love how students are learning spelling rules and editing their own writing.  I love how they read, discuss, and write about books.  I am thankful for the use of our iPads to record what we are learning about the Wampanoags.  Sometimes it seems that our day isn't long enough to fit in everything I want us to do!

iPads Introduced

Last week we started using iPads in the classroom.  Each student has access to their own iPad to use for educational enrichment.  Here are some of the ways we used the iPads last week:

Math Fact Practice:  We have various apps to practice addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division facts.  A couple of the apps are designed for testing your reasoning abilities while using math facts.

Vocabulary:  Students are creating a math vocabulary book on their iPad.  We will add a new page to the book each time we learn a new vocabulary word.

Poetry Books:  A few students are creating a poetry book on their iPad with their original poems.  They are adding illustrations, photographs, and a sound recording of their reading of the poem.

FYI:  Hopefully we will be able to begin posting photos and other work from our iPads onto this blog in the near future.

Brattleboro Field Trip

Our field trip to downtown Brattleboro last week was a big success.  Because of the threat of poor weather, I shortened the trip.  However, we still managed to learn a lot.   

After taking public transportation downtown, we stopped to look at the Brooks building.  Then we went to the River Garden for a snack and for a discussion about why Brattleboro was built on a river.   

Afterwards we went to Brooks Memorial Library for a scavenger hunt which involved looking for a painting of William Brattle (after whom the town was named), a mammoth tusk, cannonballs from Fort Dummer, arrowheads, and more.  We met up with research librarian Jeanne Walsh who showed us artifacts in the Brattlboro history room including a cane with a sword hidden inside.  Ask your child to tell you about the man who owned the cane sword.  

 Later, back at school, we contemplated the many changes to our town and students were asked to decide for themselves which event in history created the biggest change to the area.

Beautiful Poetry

Third graders are amazing poets.  Here are just a few of the original poems to come out of our class.  Stop by the bulletin board outside our classroom to read more poems.

Rain
Rain
Wind
Air
I stand
in the garden
waiting.
I'm soaked
to the skin
but I'm still
waiting.
I look up.
The sky is
a brilliant gray.
I hear a sound.
I freeze
as a bird
takes flight
for the first
time.
by Padma

Winter
It is winter.
The snow is falling
softly.
The trees are bare.
Winter.
by Zain

Sumdog Winners

Congratulations to Academy students!  This past week, Sumdog had a contest in southeastern VT and one of our third graders placed 3rd out of all participants!  Congrats to Alex!  We had five students in this class placing in the top 30:  Alex, Anchal, Padma, Jonah, and Grace.  These mathematicians earned lots of points for playing Sumdog and practiced their math skills at the same time.  Keep playing!